President's Corner: With Grace and Ease Submitted by Shirley Loo, sloo@crs.loc.org
November 2005 Volume 66 No. 3
The first electronic voting by SLA resulted in the bylaws amendment being approved by the membership. The approval removes a 12% cap on membership dues increases and allows for a more flexible dues structure to be implemented in January 2006. About 25% of those eligible voted which matched the level of participation for the 2005 SLA Board of Directors election. The margin was three to one for approval. Electronic voting was simple and I didn't have to put my ballot in an envelope and remember to mail it in. As SLA President Pam Rollo stated:
http://www.sla.org/Chapter/cdc
Getting 25% participation from the membership in our first eVote shows that you are willing to try new things to make your SLA experience more open and participatory. It also gives us the ability to achieve change quickly and easily, since the process can be implemented on short notice, as our wonderful staff proved in making this vote a reality.
Task Force on Chapter Structure 5
Hospitality Chair Lorraine Bell planned the successful Oct. 19 New Members Reception at the Hotel Washington with ease. We had 113 people register which included 32 new members and 11 of the 14 current SLA Board members. Immediate Past President Sheryl Rosenthal handled the program with grace when I needed to represent Area 32 in the Table Topics Contest at a Toastmasters event. With the good wishes of my Board from the previous evening, I placed second in the Division contest and still made it to the reception. A number of us including SLA Executive Director Janice R. Lachance, Past President Eileen Rourke, Past Corresponding Secretary Bill Turner, DCLA President Kathryn Ray, and new member Lavonda Broadnax had been at the ALA Washington Office Open House earlier in the afternoon. Victor Monti did the spring 2005 dine-arounds for the first time after hosting wellattended dinners in the past. With his successful coordination, he was asked to manage the fall dine-arounds and he again found hosts for various locations and worked out dates to allow members an opportunity to attend at least one dinner. In a new initiative, groups such as the International Relations Committee are hosting specific dine-arounds. Did you make one of the dine-arounds and network with other information professionals? If not, resolve to sign up in the spring. This is the second year that Jenny Wood has done the Web events calendar for the chapter. She keeps it up-to-date including the teasers on our chapter home page. When I decided to move the meeting location for the Board to LM 215 at the Library of Congress a couple of days before our Oct. 18 meeting, Jenny made the change immediately. As Corresponding Secretary to fill Michael White's term and then elected in her own right, Jenny has supported chapter events with timely emails. Our printed events calendar by Shelia Jackson appears monthly without fail. Shelia keeps on top of events and she makes most Board meetings though she comes to DC from Baltimore during rush hour. She makes attendance look easy! In addition to serving as SLA Chapter Cabinet Chair-Elect, Past President Anne Caputo is our Awards Committee Chair this year. If you have suggestions for nominations for SLA awards, contact Anne soon. Anne keeps the Board informed about relevant SLA affairs and supports the chapter in other ways such as providing the location for our July Planning Breakfast meeting. She and Past President Susan Fifer Canby graciously served as the institutional memory for the current Board.
Inside this issue: President’s Corner
1
Board Meeting Update
3
New Member Reception
6
Holiday Party
8
New Members
10
Book Club
10
Volunteers Needed!
10
Member news
10
Read about the new products and services from: • • • • • • • •
Capcon Dialog InfoCurrent OCLC Capcon Library Associates Trak Legal EOS International Factiva
Check us out on the Web http://www.sla.org/Chapter/cdc/
Next Newsletter Deadline For December issue is November 21. Email bferry@ngs.org
There are many more examples of grace and ease in our chapter. I look forward to hearing about them at various chapter events in the coming year.
DC/SLA Chapter Notes | November 2005
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